


King in the Rivers, Queen in the North

by queensmooting



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Resurrection, Robb Lives, sort of tee hee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 11:22:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensmooting/pseuds/queensmooting
Summary: Robb comes home without a heart.





	King in the Rivers, Queen in the North

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a convo with ao3 user oheart. we were talking about zombie robbwind & then this happened & I'm just now getting around to posting it bc I suck! enjoy

They tie the boy-king to his wolf and roll them into the river together, laughter gurgling above the surface. They send the mother after him, after they’ve hacked her into halves, Tully and Stark. The fish find her. The Brotherhood finds him.

 

When Lord Dondarrion breathes his last into the blueing corpse of King Robb, the boy's eyes aren’t the only to open.

 

They were one from the day they met. They could never go without each other.

 

“Grey Wind,” he whispers, his last words and his first.

 

*

 

After the coronation Sansa slips into the crypts, the shouts of her bannermen ringing in her ears. She walks until the earth steals all sound from above. She walks until she reaches her father, seated beside Lyanna. Grey Wind rests at her brother’s stone feet on Eddard’s right.

 

She’s visited enough times. No longer do their faces send her to her knees in grief. Now, for the first time, she imagines a statue of her own. A place at Robb’s side. She wonders if he felt this young after the northmen named him king. This uncertain.

 

She wonders how much her stone wolf would resemble Lady, small even for her age, sweet-smiled and gentle-eyed.

 

Her councillors were waiting. All strangers but for Brienne, all taking the places of spirits Sansa could still hear laughing in her halls, sprinting through her courtyards. 

 

She can’t imagine her lady mother had a moment to weep, even at war, even watching her family disappear around her. So Sansa rises, straight-backed and dry-eyed, and leaves her ghosts to their rest.

 

*

 

_ Brother Heartless _ , the Brotherhood called him for the gap in his chest. The name did its work spreading fear through the riverlands, but a wolf could only be contained so long. He had no patience for the Brotherhood’s trials and nooses and clever speeches.

 

It’s mere weeks before he disappears into the woods with Grey Wind, blade in hand. A wolf only needed its teeth.

 

*

 

Arya comes home in the third year of Sansa’s reign, dismounting a white horse at the front gate. She’s near as tall as Jon was the day they all left.

 

“Got this off the Freys,” Arya says as introduction. She pulls a crown from her bag, inlaid with tiny swords and a snarling direwolf’s head at the front. “They say it was Robb’s.”

 

“Got it…” The shock of her sister’s face gives way to the shock of her words. “These Freys. You killed them?”

 

“Them? No, they were already dead when I found them.”

 

Sansa swallows. “You've killed others?”

 

Arya laughs, high and sharp. Her smile is fond as Sansa’s ever seen it. Sansa’s heart splits.

 

Arya comes close and stretches to rest the crown on Sansa’s head. Sansa wants to cry at her sister’s touch. 

 

“There you are.” Arya smirks when she adds, “Your Grace.”

 

Finally Sansa takes her sister into her arms. She can’t remember the last time they held each other like this. Perhaps only ever as babes. This time she cries.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa whispers, for everything in the world. “I’m sorry.”

 

*

 

He remembers.

 

He remembers his mother’s face, Roose Bolton’s grip on his shoulder, the mirth of a hundred Freys. A faceless name: Jaime Lannister. He remembers the stirring of low strings and the last words on his lips and the steel in his heart. Warging into his wolf, before they filled Grey Wind with quarrels.

 

A hole in his chest still gapes to the light. He remembers the wedding. But beyond, nothing.

 

The alpha of the pack seems to remember him, a she-wolf nearly as big as Grey Wind. She near had a fit when they first found each other, knocking him down in her eagerness and nipping at Grey Wind’s ears. But the playful spark had long left his wolf, and death stole his own memory.

 

For years he roams the woods with the wolves, and with them he exacts a far better revenge, putting Lannister and Frey and Bolton men to the sword and to the teeth. But he never can remember the alpha’s name. The old him might have even felt sorry about it.

 

*

 

Rumors grow of the pack. It was said no southroner could pass the Neck alive. As rumors grow they call upon Sansa to act, as if the sigil on her crown gave her reign over every wolf.

 

“Every day they come farther north,” the frightened envoy from Barrowton tells her in the common hall. “Winter is here, shouldn’t they be going the opposite way? What will we do when they reach us?”

 

“A wolf is a wild creature, not an armed marauder,” Sansa tells him. “Keep your doors shut, your livestock inside, and they will pass.”

 

The man nods, but his eyes stay uneasy. “My queen, the smallfolk say…”

 

“What do the smallfolk say?”

 

“They say there’s a man among the pack. They say it’s the Young Wolf come again, leading his new army.”

 

_ They did say he can’t be killed _ , she thinks, and wants to laugh and scream. “It makes for a fine story. We will need many of them to see us through winter. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

 

She gathers her Queensguard and commands Brienne and Lyanna to take riders to the villages north of the Neck, to warn them to shut away their sheep and cattle.

 

“What about me?” Arya asks.

 

Sansa looks at her sister.  _ The last two Starks. Aren’t we? _ She shivers at the smallfolk tales, the thought of her brother’s miraculous survival, or his ghost. She shivers even as her heart yearns.

 

“Your place is here,” she says, and Arya’s smile fills with relief.

 

*

 

He hates, and little else.

 

When the wolves rest he and Grey Wind lay at their sides but they do not sleep. The growing cold of the world doesn’t disturb him. 

 

Somehow he knows it’s wrong, that he shouldn’t be here. There’s someone waiting for him-- _ Jeyne? No, mother _ \--and others too, the shape of a faceless man, and two smaller ones whose names he can’t remember.

 

He lies in the snow watching stars blur above him as the empty places in his body fill with hate.

 

*

 

The winter drives the birds south with the tall deer and the rabbits in the field. The winter drives south all but the wolves.

 

Trails of carnage streaked through the riverlands and westerlands, yet Sansa hears of no killing on their passage through the north. Markets close, farmers pen in their livestock, and no word of attack reaches her ears. Something about the north seems to soothe the beasts.

 

Yet whispers still grow of the risen king, and a pair of direwolves among the pack. Whispers grow of a fire-haired man running tirelessly at the alpha’s side, wielding a bloodied sword.

 

Sansa mentions it to her sister at breakfast. Arya’s face goes guarded, tight.

 

“What do you know of this?” Sansa asks.

 

“I saw them.”

 

“Them…?”

 

“Years ago, I--I thought it was a dream.”

 

Sansa puts down her spoon and takes her sister’s hands. “Tell me.”

 

“I was Nymeria. In the dream. I could see through her eyes, smell with her senses, hear with her ears...we were  _ one _ . She was hunting in the riverlands, I think, and there was a body in the river, two bodies…it was Robb and Grey Wind, they were bound together, they were so heavy but Nymeria was strong. Then there were voices, and Nymeria ran, then I woke up.”

 

Sansa’s breath leaves her. “Why hadn’t you spoken of this before?”

 

“I didn’t know it was a true wolf dream. I thought--” Arya meets her eyes. “Did you ever, with Lady…?”

 

“No.” The years-old grief swims up to meet her. “No, I never did.”

 

_ Lady. Grey Wind _ . Always the most dignified of the pack of six. Sansa used to giggle watching them sit together during supper, heads high and proud. She once said that he might have named his wolf Lord to match hers, and he agreed with a smile. She knew he was placating, the way he and Jon both did when she was being girlish and silly. Still she loved him for indulging her. For never laughing at her dreams.

 

“If...if it’s him…” Sansa hardly dares to think it. “Even now he must be doing this for us. Why else target the ones who've wronged us?”

 

Arya is silent for nearly a minute as they return to their breakfasts.

 

“I thought only Jon would want me back,” her sister finally says, quiet as a shadow.

 

“No, Arya.” Sansa takes her hand again. “Not only Jon.”

 

*

 

He can’t recall a single battlement of the castle until he sees it again. The snowy sight of Winterfell calls to a long-gone soul.

 

The twilit courtyards are vacant, and he and Grey Wind pass through like ghosts. Somehow he knows where he must go.

 

Feet and paws move in silence across the godswood.  _ It was always like that here _ , he thinks, and doesn’t know why. An auburn-haired woman stands expectantly before the white-bark tree, so familiar he almost remembers what it was to have a heart.

 

“Mother?” he says, one of the few words he remembers. But no, somehow he knows it’s not right, she wouldn’t be here--

 

“Sansa,” she says, and the name makes a dull sort of sense.

 

_ Yes. Sansa _ .

 

“And Arya.”

 

He hadn’t seen the girl, but she approaches now, broad-shouldered and solemn. He remembers. His mouth won't form the words, but he remembers.

 

_ I've killed them, _ he wants to tell them. It seems important to tell them.  _ I’m done. _

 

“You’re home,” the first woman says. “You’re home.”

 

He was so tired. He never noticed. He never realized how much it hurt, the piercings through his body, the gap where his heart once raced into battle.

 

_ I’ve killed them all. _

 

There’s horror in the girl Arya’s eyes, the one who looks like-- _ who? _ \--but Sansa, unafraid, catches him as he sags. He’s never felt warmth like the hand she presses to his cold white cheek. Arya recoils.

 

“You can rest now.”

 

_ Rest _ . He’s never rested. He wonders what it will be like. If it will be better than this.

 

Sansa nods toward Arya, who takes tentative steps toward Grey Wind. Then Sansa takes his hand.

 

They kneel together, the King and Queen in the North. In the sight of the heart tree Sansa prays, warm hands twined in cold. Somewhere behind him Grey Wind goes silent, and his own wolf senses go dark. Her words fill the empty spaces.

 

_ Rest _ .

 

Tears fill Sansa’s eyes when she finishes praying. Then his sisters surround him, one with steel at her crown, the other with steel in her hand.

 

_ Sansa. Arya. _

 

“Robb,” Sansa says, and he remembers. He sees them now.

 

Snowflakes melt in his sisters’ hair. He closes his eyes and still he sees them.

 

_ Jeyne. Mother. Grey Wind. _

 

In the end, Arya grants him mercy.

 

*

 

They bury his body beside Eddard's. Then Sansa falls into bed, cold and alone, the strangling weight in her chest keeping her beyond tears.

 

She doesn't hear the door open or close. She forgets how her sister moves like a ghost now.

 

“Move,” Arya says.

 

Sansa slides over on the bed, heart hollow as Robb's. Then a third body joins them, warm as the hearth. Robb and Grey Wind weren’t the only ones to come home.

 

“Nymeria,” she whispers as the wolf nuzzles her face. “You're too big to share with us.”

 

“She is not,” Arya protests.

 

The newcomers get comfortable and the room falls silent. With the wolf at her side, Sansa could find sleep. She almost does before her sister speaks, softer than the fire.

 

“I don't want to kill again.”

 

Sansa reaches across Nymeria and cradles her sister close. Nymeria wraps a paw around Arya’s back as she hears a soft sob from her sister. 

 

_ I’m truly the eldest now _ , Sansa realizes.  _ I have to protect her.  _

 

She wonders if she’ll ever see Arya as anything but the little girl chasing their brothers across a courtyard, hair dirty and wild.

 

“You never will,” Sansa promises. “Never again. You’re home now.”

 

After a time Arya closes her eyes, and Sansa remembers standing at her side in the crypts, laying their brother and his wolf to rest beside their father. Together again.

 

“You’re home now,” she whispers to the dark.


End file.
